I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read,
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed,
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Note: Ozymandias is a Greek version of a name for the Egyptian pharaoh, Ramesses II. The upper section of a massive statue of Ramesses II, known as the Younger Memnon, was acquired by the British Museum in 1816. Its impending arrival in London inspired Shelley and a colleague, Horace Smith, to write poems on what would happen if a traveller came across the lower section of the statue somewhere in Egypt. Smith projected London going the way of Ramesses's city one day, and how a hunter chancing on some fragment would reflect on 'What powerful but unrecorded race Once dwelt in that annihilated place'.